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What are your favorite PREHISTORY resources for kindergarten?


AimeeM
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We're just finishing up prehistory over here. I thought we'd line up all sorts of stuff, but found simpler works best for us. We read through Usborne's Internet Linked Prehistoric World, one two page spread a week. When we were done, Silas would draw a picture and narrate a few of the most important things we read that day. We'd go to the library and find a few other books about the topic that week. We'd read through them informally. I'd check netflix to see if there was anything appropriate. BBC's Walking with Monsters, Walking with Dinosaurs, Life of Mammals, Walking with Beasts have all been really great (i'm in Canada so our selection is more limited).

 

If there was more interest, we'd spend more time on library books. Volcanoes, the different kinds of dinosaurs (Usborne categorized them into herbivores, carnivores, flying and sea reptiles), and now mammoths and saber tooths are big hits. We're about to get into early man, starting with primates next week and he's really excited about that. Oh, I also had Usborne's dinosaur cards and he really enjoyed that. We'd play games where we'd categorize them by what they ate or how they moved, we organize them by era, or "find a dinosaur with (sharp teeth, two claws, that eats bugs, that's much bigger than dad)" . Big hit! Some of the pages in Usborne had hardly any extra resources - "The Horse's Story" for example (evolution of the horse). No big deal, just moved on.

 

Worked awesome for us! Hope that helps. History is currently ds's favorite school thing to do!

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We made a prehistory timeline using colored cardstock paper for each time period like this one. I printed lots of pictures for my DD to cut up and paste collage style on each sheet. Then I helped her come up with a real short and simple snippet to write on lined paper. We hung them up the wall. We also watched the Walking With Dinosaurs series as it pertained to the area we were covering and did little projects occasionally. I plan to do this with my K'er too but may wait a few more months with him to be more "ready". He asks me a lot of questions about this so I know he'll enjoy it.(Can't find the time line photo right now. And my enter key isn't working???)..8548346701_6360724995_n.jpg

Prehistory timeline by LolaT, on Flickr8549453448_8c03eccc7a_n.jpg

Trilobite cookies by LolaT, on Flickr8549467940_29bbe175af_n.jpg

Play-doh prehistoric animals by LolaT, on Flickr

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I have the Charlie's Playhouse critter cards and timeline. We did prehistory just over a year ago. Some of the things we did may be too simple, but you can see them here. We made kimberella out of noodles, excavated for bones,

 

I have the critter cards - if you ever want to sell your timeline, let me know, lol!

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My Kinder loves this stuff. We watched all the docs on Netflix we could find. Books like DK Visual Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, Usborne's Prehistory Encyclopedia. I also found a set of books called When Bugs Were Big. There's thre of them about different prehistory critters. We've made fossil cookies. Basically sugar cookies that we pressed little plastic dinos and bugs into gently before baking. We just got the History odyssey prehistory timeline. We've played with a Dig a Dinosaur kit and put together the triceratops.

 

 

OP you may also want to do a search on Google for Montessori cosmic education.

http://www.thegreatstory.org/

http://www.thegreats...tory_beads.html

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We liked these -- I split the reading over several days for each. They are a bit pagan for my taste -- there's description of the universe spirit, which never dies but simply reforms itself in many shapes, and frankly I find the idea that living things are indifferent to being destroyed and rebuilt to be offensive -- but that bit is easily glossed if it bugs you, and the books themselves do a wonderful job.

 

Born with a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story

From Lava to Life: The Universe Tells Our Earth Story

Mammals who Morph: The Universe Tells Our Evolution Story

 

We also liked videos from the Schlessinger "All About.." series such as "All About Land Formations" -- there is also a fossil one. I linked to their Earth Science for Children titles there -- we actually got these via our library. I do buy some but not as many as I'd like, they are expensive.

 

All of this is Old Earth material.

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  • 3 months later...

This is an old-ish thread now, but in case you are still looking: I LOVE the book "Mammoths on the Move," by Lisa Wheeler. It's a short picture book, but packs a lot of complex ideas and vocabulary into a simple story that has led to lots of questions and discussion at my house. I don't know why it hasn't made the "popular" lists around here! It would be great for K, and my 7yo still enjoys it.

 

Jan Brett's "The First Dog" has been a lasting hit at my house too. Lisa Peters' "Our Family Tree" (on evolution) and Karen Fox's "Older than the Stars" (on the big bang) are great for that age-- good information presented in a gentle way with nice pictures. The "Toob" company has some fun tubes of extinct critter "fossil" skulls my kids enjoy playing with, and places like JoAnn's seem to have them on sale periodically.

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